


Then the heart of Éowyn changed...

by amyfortuna



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bonds Between Women, F/M, Gap Filler, Gen, Healing, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 03:58:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10654443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: Éowyn didn't just randomly decide to be a healer; it was Ioreth's influence that aided her recovery and gave her new ambition.





	Then the heart of Éowyn changed...

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Legendarium Ladies April, for the April 1 prompt: 
> 
> Poetry Prompt: _Untitled_ , by Elizabeth Hewer  
>  _It’s so very cold here but—you know, we’re burning._  
>  _Screaming, running, making music. Making music!_  
>  _Sticking our fingers into fire to see how it feels,_  
>  _licking icicles and leaving our belongings on trains._  
>  _Telling each other stories, explaining genetics_  
>  _to babies and laughing when it looks like they’re listening._  
>  _That’s humanity. That’s what I want to answer_  
>  _when people demand: what is the point in anything?_  
>  _There’s no point, but see—we made velvet and_  
>  _we gave mountains names. We saw crashing oceans,_  
>  _we saw the vast emptiness of space and we thought:_  
>  _what’s in there? What’s over there? How can I get across?_  
>  _There’s no point; and that’s the beauty of it._  
>  _No point and we’ve still got poetry._  
>  _No point and we’ve still got stars._
> 
> And also for the B2MEM 2017 prompt: _"The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour down like golden streams breaking through the sky."_

The Houses of Healing were grey and soft places, full of warm light and comfortable chairs, once Éowyn was ready to get up from her bed and walk about. The early spring was wakening the gardens up, and she wandered over the grass in the warmth of the sun, wrapped in the dark blue mantle that was a gift from Faramir. 

Faramir had departed from the healers' care now, and was away much of the time, but every day he came to see her, to inquire how she did, and then left again to do his duties, leaving her staring after him with new feelings welling up in her heart that she did not quite understand. 

In the silence and the peace, Éowyn felt restless and bored, wandering from chair to chair on her unsteady feet, reaching out now and then to feel the brocade of the fine old curtains, limping now and then, just a little, feeling jarred and shaken. Her mind could not rest, which meant her body could not rest. She circled the halls a dozen times a day, her mind racing between scattered thoughts -- the wastelands of despair, the slow bloom of new love, the wonder at being alive yet having passed as it were through death, the pangs, now and then, for love that she remembered feeling for Aragorn, though those were a shadow already fading in the sunshine of Faramir's smile. 

Into the tumult of her mind, Ioreth came one day. Éowyn was aware of the renowned healer -- no one could be in the same house as Ioreth and not be aware of her -- and her tendency to chatter on about inconsequential matters, though it had annoyed Aragorn, was a comfort to many of her patients. She was brisk, efficient as her tongue was garrulous, and kind as the day was long. 

Ioreth found her in a sunny corner, staring out a window with eyes that saw nothing of the garden nor the blue sky beyond it. She dropped into the chair beside her, and immediately began speaking without a by-your-leave, giving names to all the herbs Éowyn had not been looking at. 

"There's mugwort, and peppermint -- ah, that's good for the stomach -- and lavender and valerian. And you can probably find a fair bit of catnip here and there -- just look for the cats! Nothing compares to having a nice cat on your lap for comfort! Why, I said to my sisters the last time I visited Imloth Melui, that I missed having cats of my own in the city, but the way things go, cats wander here and there as they like. Any cat who wanders by my house gets a bite to eat if I've any to spare, and any cat who wanders into the Houses of Healing gets the royal treatment, for that's what they are, royalty, and they know it too." 

Éowyn had at this point turned her full attention to Ioreth. It was impossible to sit and think strange thoughts about death and despair with some old woman cheerily prattling on about cats and herbs like nothing in the world was wrong and everything would be well. 

"I..." Éowyn began to speak, but trailed off, and Ioreth laid her hand over the ones folded in Éowyn's lap, gently. 

"You don't have to speak unless you wish to, my dear. Until then, I'll happily talk for the both of us." Ioreth's smile was a secret they shared, and a glance passed between them, women who were beginning to understand each other. 

"How do you do it?" Éowyn suddenly burst out, mystified and overwhelmed. Here, perhaps lay the root of her pain and grief. "Care for people all day, all the time, sick people, people who are dying, people who are not even in their right minds, people who hardly know their dinner knives from their swords? What keeps you on your feet in the dark nights when your heart is breaking, and everything you do seems to be of no avail? What is the point of it? What is the point of anything?" Her voice was breaking as she spoke, and the tears seemed to rush unbidden to her eyes and then burn themselves away just as fast. 

"Oh," Ioreth said softly, and patted Éowyn's hand twice. The gesture was tender and comforting without being patronising, like she was telling a fellow healer how to carry on. "There doesn't need to be a point to it, my dear, does there?" 

"Doesn't there?" Éowyn said in a very small voice. "There seems little reward for such devotion. A healer's hands are the first to delve into pain and suffering, and the last to be withdrawn. Long after every battle is finished, you will be here, still fighting it. And you will lose, time and again, for even if you can cure someone, they will still die. They will go out to the battlefield and do their best to be killed, and what can you do then?"

"Well, if they 'scape killing, patch them up again and send them back out," Ioreth said, a twinkle in her eye. "It is not my duty to tell those whom I've healed to remain safe behind the walls, not with the enemy at our gates and in our fields."

"Then why tell me?" Éowyn's voice was soft, and her brother would have known that to be a warning sign. Éowyn always lowered her voice when she was angry. 

"You are not healed, my lady," Ioreth said. "There are other maladies than those of the body, and though you have been wounded and recover now from your wounds, the pain that still dwells in your mind prevents any fair-minded healer from dismissing you."

"I wished only for a glorious death in battle," Éowyn said, her voice a little louder now. Her heart was pounding hard in her breast, and her breathing was erratic. Even as she said the words she knew them to be a lie, or perhaps a half-truth. 

"Did you?" Ioreth said, and for once said nothing more, but her eyes were eloquent.

"I wished for an escape from the cage that my life has become," she said after a moment. "Death would surely be that."

"Have you seen much death, then?" Ioreth said. "Did the ones you tended in their last moments look as though they were escaping?" 

Éowyn paused, a troubled look on her face. She was recalling the pained expression on Theodred's face, the stricken, broken, look of him as his spirit fled. "My cousin," she whispered. "No." Theoden's face, too, with its look of mingled pain and peace, wanted to rise in her mind, but she could not bear to think on it, not yet.

Ioreth reached out again and took her hand in her own wrinkled, rose-soft ones. "Death is no escape," she said. "It is just an end. None can know what awaits us in the darkness when our eyes have been closed for the last time. I am a healer, my lady, because I love life, because I wish to fight for life. Every battle I fight in these rooms against injury and disease means as much as the battles fought on the fields below, nay, more, for our enemy is implacable and cannot be destroyed forever. Do you desire a glorious fight to your own death, lady Éowyn? Then be a healer!" 

"I have been a nursemaid, and it was a weary duty," Éowyn said. "I had no hope and I hated it, and only my love for the one I cared for made it possible. I knew nothing of what I should be doing, and spent my hours in guessing, and oft was wrong, and oft was filled with despair." 

"Then you should learn what to do," Ioreth said, standing up, Éowyn's hand still in hers. "Come with me to the garden, and begin your studies." 

Éowyn rose and followed Ioreth, and for a while they walked about the garden while Ioreth named the herbs that grew there, and told her many of their healing properties. She spoke little in reply, but listened closely, and though her face was still sad, she now thought of herbs rather than grief, and of salves and tinctures rather than death in battle. 

Day by day the lessons went on, and the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And when the time came that Faramir told her of his love for her, she realised that the morning had come and the darkness in her heart was vanishing. 

"I will be a healer," she said, "and love all things that grow and are not barren."


End file.
